


drones in the valley

by wahahaha



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Angst, Gen, Gladiators, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 08:29:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11032455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wahahaha/pseuds/wahahaha
Summary: It's about the ninth execution today. A bit of an estimate, but nobody (Tsukishima has known personally) has ever died from guessing. The new prince has been trying to gain popularity with the public, but no real fights have happened today. Oh well. The system of contractually obligating war criminals and the poor to fight to the death wasn't built in a day, or whatever.





	drones in the valley

**Author's Note:**

> In a world, where Roman gladiators can have names like Tsukishima...

Tsukishima thinks about how he will lose his leg  _and_ his job. He draws a lion in the sand with his finger. 

He can barely see Kageyama from the ground. Certainly not around the curve of Yamaguchi's back. He briefly thinks about telling him to move out of the way, but Yamaguchi has had more than enough on his hands today. Tsukishima watches him carefully wipe between his fingers with a cloth. He has some of Tsukki's gore on his cheek. He briefly thinks about telling him to wipe it off. 

It's about the ninth execution today. A bit of an estimate, but nobody (Tsukishima has known personally) has ever died from guessing. The new prince has been trying to gain popularity with the public, but no real fights have happened today. Oh well. The system of contractually obligating war criminals and the poor to fight to the death wasn't built in a day, or whatever. Some animal sacrifices in the morning, the executions of petty criminals now. It happens. 

This isn't a particularly exciting fight, and there's not even a festival or anything. It's just another group of rebels who'll be long forgotten before the real show at noon. Unless one of them survives. Kageyama did that. If the one who Kageyama would try to kill, if he lived and Kageyama died, that would be sort of funny. Kageyama lasted a lot longer than anyone had expected, but they shouldn't have been so surprised. They thought that he ordered so many executions and wars and battles because he was afraid of getting his hands dirty. They were wrong. He couldn't seem to help but get his hands dirty all the time. He  _liked_ it, even. 

Today's execution might end up like that. Everyone would get a kick out of it, but it's not like Kageyama actually had an eye for good business or anything like that. He got the crowd excited, but he didn't know how. Sometimes Tsukishima played around with the idea that he just had a natural talent for violence, in the same way that some people have a penchant for playing the lute, or writing poetry. Except nobody's ever thrown a nation into economic and political ruin by writing a really good poem. Funny how that works. 

Maybe he got off on knocking people's brains around. No way of knowing. Well, he could ask. Except he doesn't want to know for sure, because he has a feeling that it has got to be true. With a record like that. Must be easy to wrestle a man to death if you can blow a load all the while. 

The fight hasn't even started yet. What was taking so long anyway?

Kageyama looks anxious waiting. He has a helmet with no eyes, but he shifts from foot to foot and he scratches his arm. It looks like there's been a change in plans; the other fighter is being moved to a different exit. From the looks of it, he's passed out. No wonder things are taking so long; that's no good. Kageyama is given a short dagger. One of the rebels (same as all the rest a tunic that was pretty much useless in the condition it was in, barefoot, dirty as all hell) is pushed out into the open. 

Kageyama is pushed into the arena. The crowd loves him. They roar and roar. Even Tsukishima's ears start ringing from under the arena. 

"Stop squirming." Tsukishima stops. He shifts his weight onto the leg Yamaguchi isn't fussing with. 

The rebel keeps a tight grip on his own knife and swings it around. 

"Why'd you go and do something like this, Tsukki?"

And around and around and around.  _The man is sobbing,_ he thinks. It's hard to hear, but he thrashes around and makes it sort of obvious. Kageyama picks up on the sound immediately— perks up like a wild animal. Dashes towards the man. He tackles him— poorly, but he's clearly putting all of his weight and effort into getting him onto the ground. He succeeds. And it's not very hard to tackle a starved and sleep-deprived prisoner when you're one of the best fed citizens— pardon the language,  _war criminals —_ in the nation these days. They both crumple to the ground. 

He tries to pull his leg away. "Ouch, Yamaguchi." He gets his hands slapped away. Yamaguchi digs his thumb into the pools of coagulated blood and pus that have collected on the surface of his skin. He wipes the surface with a rag. He moves the mess around and reaches for a clean one. 

"Why." Yamaguchi wipes his hands on the cloth again. 

Kageyama seizes the man's throat with one of his hands. He wrestles his dagger away, too, and throws it out of reach. 

Yamaguchi wipes the palm of his hand on the edge of his tunic. It comes away but is connected with strings of fluid to the cloth, still dirty.

The muscles of Kageyama's chest glisten under the hot sun while he straddles the guy with both of his legs. Maybe he really does get off on it. What a guy. No wonder all the noble women just adored him, absolutely no wonder at all. 

"I don't know."

Yamaguchi blows some air through his teeth. 

Kageyama is shaking like the other man is actually putting up a fight. He always gets so nervous; it makes his work very tension-filled. Very suspenseful stuff.

Kageyama nearly stabs his own hand while he throws the knife around every goddamn which way. He presses his hand down on the man's chest, hard, to get him to stop moving, and gets at least half of the knife in his throat, too.

Finally they could get to the good stuff— the really lovely part was that Kageyama never half-assed anything. So when the guy's blindfold falls off (and the crowd doesn't mind, because at this point it's more entertaining to watach his throat spasm while he chokes— Tsukishima knows how they feel), and he's coughing blood all over Kageyama, it's not enough. No, that's not an execution suited for a king. Not good enough for Kageyama. He grabs the man by the hair and he keeps ripping his knife in and out of that mess of gore that used to produce something other than useless gagging noises, probably. Poetry, perhaps. 

Anyhow, Kageyama looks like he's gone digging for carrots. Probably trying to cut through his neck with that shitty dagger. Good fucking luck. 

"When?"

"I don't know."

"Training?"

"I don't know."

"When did this happen?"

"I don't know."

He keeps going until the man stops making noises, partly because the whole of his head has been hacked off. A bit unevenly, perhaps, but not a bad job for a blind man. The head comes loose and Kageyama's jostled around from the momentum. 

Kageyama lets out a large breath— he once confessed (without any encouragement from Tsukishima, mind) that he holds his breath for as long as possible because he doesn't like the smell. Some people worry about the morality of it all, but Kageyama prioritizes his royal nose above all else. What a guy.

He throws the head on the ground like it's a wet rag. Salt and pepper hair under all that blood. Some people get gray hair at a very young age. Yamaguchi once said that it tends to be common among family members. If Kageyama had a mind for business, he would turn it right side up so that the crowd can see.

"I'm not going to die from a scratch _,_ of all things."

"You're right, Tsukki. You're going to die because you're careless." He doesn't wipe his hands off when he runs his hands through his hair. 

"I..."

The crowd seems satisfied. They scream at Kageyama until it sounds like one long roar, like the whole arena's underwater and it's impossible to make out a sound. It was a quick execution, but thanks to Kageyama, it's also very messy. It's really admirable how he's always willing to lend a helping hand. 

Kageyama's dagger and blindfold are taken away. 

Tsukishima picks up a rag from the ground with one hand and picks up Yamaguchi's hand with the other. He swallows hard, and he wipes down the skin between Yamaguchi's fingers. His eyes wander to the sands again. 

Kageyama is pushed back into the arena as his next victim is shoved in from the other side. Oh. It's the same guy from earlier, the one who passed out. Heatstroke?

This guy trips and stumbles around even more than the last one, tripping and stumbling around even more than the last one, one foot over the other, kicking up clouds of dirt and hardly moving forward all the while. His ankle looks like it's swollen. Tsukishima clutches and then releases and then clutches his fingers. That might be why it was taking him so long to walk in a straight line. That and the heat. 

Even though the air is cooler out of the sun, the wound stinks and Tsukishima can smell it immediately. He flushes. This is disgusting.

"I'm sorry."

The crowd starts booing. Kageyama is the type of fighter who doesn't move until he knows where he's going. When he fights blind, it produces some of the most drawn-out, boring fights in the arena, or some of the goriest. One time he cut up a man's face— nose, ear, and even one of his lips before he managed to stab hinm in the throat. Kageyama has relied somewhat heavily on the throat-stabbing method of combat. 

Oh, one time he did stab someone in the back. His father. That's how he became emperor at age 17, remiss of Tsukishima to forget. 

Kageyama has been fighting long enough to know that the entrances of the combatants are always placed directly across from one another. It still takes him a few seconds to actually think this through, but he charges across the stadium until he's headbutting the prisoner in the stomach. This is quite the feat, considering he's an entire head taller than him. Kageyama's bent nearly in half. 

Yamaguchi pushes Tsukishima's hands away as he gets up, and he's left sitting gracelessly on the ground with a dirty rag perched on his lap. Yamaguchi comes back with a bottle in one hand, and a rag and two cups in the other. He hands a filled glass to Tsukishima. 

"This is wine."

"Drink it." He does.

He's handed another glass. 

"Drink."

He drinks.


End file.
